When I saw the title, I expected a lot of BS about dreaming. We really don't remember many dreams. So I thought with writers they would dish out a lotWhen I saw the title, I expected a lot of BS about dreaming. We really don't remember many dreams. So I thought with writers they would dish out a lot of made up stuff. But I didn't sense that happening much. And I forgot about the rest of the subtitle: Writers talk about their dreams and the creative process. That last part when the authors talked about their writing process was terrific. I loved reading this. ...more
Here is a quote by the author on the topic You Are Universal: "That slight aspect of your personality or fantasy life, or hidden world, that you thinkHere is a quote by the author on the topic You Are Universal: "That slight aspect of your personality or fantasy life, or hidden world, that you think so odd, so peculiar, so weird, that you've kept it a secret your entire life, is most likely far more common than you think. We are all made of similar stuff, we human beings. Even our most closely guarded insecurities are often commonly held, though most individuals keep these parts so hidden that there is little chance to discover the commonality."
"Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time."--Howard Nemerov. ...more
My favorite was Martha Carlson-Bradley's essay on removing filters in poetry. That means getting rid of phrases like I watch, I listen, I think, and sMy favorite was Martha Carlson-Bradley's essay on removing filters in poetry. That means getting rid of phrases like I watch, I listen, I think, and so on. ...more
I think I would have enjoyed the book more if I were younger, but I'm not.
A story in here about Natalie Goldberg who wrote the very good writing bookI think I would have enjoyed the book more if I were younger, but I'm not.
A story in here about Natalie Goldberg who wrote the very good writing book Writing Down the Bones. A student asks her for her best possible writing advice. She picks up a writing tablet and makes believe she is writing on it. Writers generally say you have to write if you want to be a writer. But is that really enough. I would recommend reading. But reading the way a writer would read: studying the writing.
There is another story from Alice Adams. She sometimes uses a formula when writing a short story: ABDCE, for Action, Background, Development, Climax, and Ending. ...more
Interesting essays on poetry, literature, publishing, writing.
Here is one poem referred to in the book:
TODAY I WAS SO HAPPY, SO I MADE THIS POEM by JInteresting essays on poetry, literature, publishing, writing.
Here is one poem referred to in the book:
TODAY I WAS SO HAPPY, SO I MADE THIS POEM by James Wright
As the plump squirrel scampers Across the roof of the corncrib, The moon suddenly stands up in the darkness, And I see that it is impossible to die. Each moment of time is a mountain. An eagle rejoices in the oak trees of heaven, Crying This is what I wanted.
Here is another:
Strangers in this City Where We Have Come Seeking a Cure for Her Cancer, My Daughter and I Drive Up to the Clinic by Jo McDougall
A buzzard lands on the roof . In the dusk, in my confusion, I mistake it for a blue heron. I call to my daughter, "Look!"
And the author's follow up poem:
Oaks by Jo McDougall
When friends came, bringing food and sympathy, I asked them to speak of my daughter in the present tense.
When I visited her grave, the oak trees, casting their ferny shadows, set me straight.
Robert Frost was once asked if he really paid attention to all those "technical things." He responded, "Madam, I revel in them."
Miller Williams: "One of the little-noted and overlooked advantages of rhyme is the way in which it broadens the poet's net for language. The search for a rhyme leads a poet not infrequently to come across words that otherwise would not have been considered for the poem at hand and that in turn can take the poem in delightfully surprising directions."
Rhyme also provides a mnemonic quality to poems that makes them easy to memorize.
The Common Wisdom by Howard Nemerov
Their marriage is a good one. In our eyes What makes a marriage good? Well, that the tether Fray but not break, and that they stay together. One should be watching while the other dies.
". . . if the poem is not properly resolved, it will feel as if the floor as suddenly fallen away. Many of the means of resolving a poem lie in the handling of form and the expectation that form has raised: the introduction of a longer or shorter line than expected, a tightened of the poem's established meter, modification of the rhyme pattern, returning to a rhyme scheme or stanza form after deviating from it. Without that form raises some of the best means of resolution are lost."
Comment on T. S. Eliot's "The Love Song of Alfred Prufrock": ". . . perhaps the single most important poem of [the twentieth century] written in English, as an example of how powerful free verse can be. It is, in fact, an example of how effectively a good poet can disguise established patterns. 'Prufrock' is NOT free verse but tightly blank verse with the five-stress lines frequently broken into two or three feet or one and four feet, these scattered about the poem, with scattered rhyme throughout, and with the standard blank verse resolving device of a rhymed couplet. I recommend this sort of thing, experimenting with set forms . . . as a rewarding way to rediscover the forms and the good uses of patterns in poetry."
"Every act of writing is an excursion into memory."
". . . In fact, lines of plain detailed description--of an old building or a field of flowers or of a mountain range or how one picks strawberries--can be deadly to a poem . . . . One focused image or one sweeping suggestion will do a lot more to keep a poem your own than will detailed description. Remember that suggestion always triggers the imagination; description almost never does."
"Read contemporary poetry . . . and poetry of the tradition."
". . . avoid stock adjective-noun combinations and stale comparisons."
"Try making your poem a narrative, perhaps a dramatic monologue, rather than the momentary expression of an emotion."
"Let the tale of the dramatic monologue be about someone other than the poet. . . ."
" . . . avoid the depiction of any character in the poem as a 'good guy' or 'bad guy.' Every believable character is complex."
"Be true to your sense of yourself."
"While you are being true to yourself, avoid running on about yourself, and especially avoid intimate revelations."
"You simply have to be sure the 'I' in the poem--ostensibly you--is so emblematic of humanity that most any reader would assume that role, could be that 'I'."
"To make this more likely, you have to free yourself from bondage to the facts. . . . Poetry is not journalism; it's an art form. . . . as John Ciardi paraphrased Picasso 'A poem lies its way to the truth.' . . . a poem has to invent its way to originality."
" . . . the poem has to sound interesting. . . . It's important to read each poem over, aloud, to work on the words until the sounds of the poem read aloud are satisfying, until they would be a pleasure to someone who didn't understand the language." ...more
Henry David Thoreau wrote 7 different drafts of Walden in 8 years. He finally pieced together what Margaret Fuller called the "mosaic" method, a book Henry David Thoreau wrote 7 different drafts of Walden in 8 years. He finally pieced together what Margaret Fuller called the "mosaic" method, a book that strikes as casual and chatty.
Annie Dillard's essay "To Fashion a Text" is the best. She says not to write a memoir. Rather write about what you are left with after years of thinking about it. Her advice is "to fashion a text. Don't hope in a memoir to preserve your memories. . . . The work battens on your memories. And it replaces them."
Dillard: "After you've written, you can no longer remember anything but the writing. However true you make that writing, you've created a monster. . . . After I've written about any experience, my memories--those elusive, fragmentary patches of color and feeling--are gone; they've been replaced by the work. The work is a sort of changeling on the doorstep--not your baby but someone else's baby rather like it, different in some way you can't pinpoint, and yours has vanished."
Dillard: "Memory is insubstantial. Things keep replacing it. Your batch of snapshots will both fix and ruin your memory of your travels, or your childhood, or your children's childhood. You can't remember anything from your trip except this wretched collection of snapshots."
E. B. White once said about his move from Manhattan to Maine that he was "homesick for loneliness." ...more
1. Insist on fresh wording and concrete imagery over familiar verbiage and abstract summary. 2. Pay attention to the readers' vantaChapter 1 summary:
1. Insist on fresh wording and concrete imagery over familiar verbiage and abstract summary. 2. Pay attention to the readers' vantage point and the target of their gaze. 3. Use the judicious placement of an uncommon word or idiom against a backdrop of simple nouns and verbs. 4. Use parallel syntax. 5. Have an occasional planned surprise. 6. Present a telling detail that obviates an explicit pronouncement. 7. Use meter and sound that resonates with the meaning and mood.
Chapter 2 summary:
1. The author calls attention to habits that "result in soggy prose": metadiscourse, signposting, hedging, apologizing, professional narcissism, cliches, mixed metaphors, metaconcepts, zombie nouns, and unnecessary passives. 2. "The writer, in conversation with a reader, directs the reader's gaze to something in the world." Each of don'ts in #1 make a writer stray.
Chapter 3 summary:
1. Be careful of sharing knowledge that your reader does not understand.
Chapter 4 summary:
1. Learn grammar and syntax. 2. Avoid unnecessary words and phrases. 3. Avoid sentences beginning with "there is" or "it is." 4. That does not mean cutting out every single word that is redundant in context. 5. Make use of structural parallelism and understand its rules. 6. Pull unrelated (but mutually attracted) phrases apart to avoid confusion. 7. Save the heaviest for last in a sentence. 8. "Topic, then comment" or "Given, then new."
Chapter 5 summary:
1. Monologophobia is the fear of using the same word more than once. On the other hand, "elegant variation" is using different words to identify the same thing. Both can be a problem. 2. Coherence is important. A lengthy discussion about this one. For example, it is important NOT to begin with what something is NOT. So after you read this, do NOT think about a white bear. 3. "A coherent text is a designed object."
Chapter 6 summary:
1. An alphabetical list of common problems in grammar. Be sure to read this carefully and follow all suggestions otherwise the planets in our solar system will implode on each other and we will all die. And you do not want to be responsible for that one, do you?
For a book about writing, this was a real slog to plod through. ...more
I can't picture "grammarphobes" wanting to read this book. Why would they? The whole point of being a grammarphobe is to be afraid of grammar. No selfI can't picture "grammarphobes" wanting to read this book. Why would they? The whole point of being a grammarphobe is to be afraid of grammar. No self-respecting grammarphobe worthy of the name would be caught dead reading a book like this.
I'm guessing it's mostly read by writers and others interested in grammar. I knew all of this stuff, although I needed some reviews. I realized how I pretty much never used much of it. And I also thought, "Why do we make such a big deal out of it?"
Two things slowed down changes in the English language: dictionaries and teachers.
Now it appears that the internet is speeding up the pace of change again.
One interesting chapter was about letting some grammar "rules" die. Here is a short list of what it should be okay to do:
1. It's okay to split an infinitive since there is really nothing to split. The rule started in the mid 1800s when grammar books called it a crime. One notable one was Henry Alford's Plea for the Queen's English.
2. It's okay to end a sentence with a preposition. Robert Lowth, a clergyman from the 1800s, is responsible for not allowing it. The rule probably had something to do with Latin.
3. "Data" should be considered a singular noun, just like agenda, opera, erotica, and insignia.
4. It's okay to start a sentence with "and" or "but."
5. It's okay to use "who" instead of "whom" in conversation. ...more
I don't suppose there could be a better book than this one for teaching writing to young children. I use it in tutoring. But it does require a lot of I don't suppose there could be a better book than this one for teaching writing to young children. I use it in tutoring. But it does require a lot of the young writer. ...more
I've been writing my memoirs, but I didn't find any great suggestions from this book. It's more of a discussion of his college writing class. I've been writing my memoirs, but I didn't find any great suggestions from this book. It's more of a discussion of his college writing class. ...more
I found it helpful in my writing tutoring work with young students. I found Natalie's difficulty in writing a novel rather interesting. It's almost asI found it helpful in my writing tutoring work with young students. I found Natalie's difficulty in writing a novel rather interesting. It's almost as if her tips didn't help herself. ...more
The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo. Here are some quotes. I loved the book. Totally hooked.
"Many writers and writing teachers believe reading and wrThe Triggering Town by Richard Hugo. Here are some quotes. I loved the book. Totally hooked.
"Many writers and writing teachers believe reading and writing have a close and important relationship. I have come to doubt this. Like many others, I once believed that by study one could discover and ingest some secret ingredient of literature that later would find its way into one's own work. I've come to believe that one learns to write only by writing."
"Literature should be studied for the most serious of all reasons: it is fun. For a young writer it should be exciting as well."
"I believe that a writer learns from reading possibilities of technique, ways of execution, phrasing, rhythm, tonality, pace."
"Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves we make poetry."--William Butler Yeats
"How do I know what I think until I see what I say."--E. M. Forster
"A poem can be said to have two subjects, the initiating or triggering subject, which starts the poem or 'causes' the poem to be written, and the real or generated subject, which the poem comes to say or mean, and which is generated or discovered in the poem during the writing. . . . The poet may not be aware of what the real subject is but only have some instinctive feeling that the poem is done."
"Young poets find it difficult to free themselves from the initiating subject. He finds two or three good lines about Autumn Rain. Then things start to break down. He cannot find anything more to say about Autumn Rain so he starts making up things, he strains, he goes abstract, he starts telling us the meaning of what he has already said. The mistake he is making, of course, is that he feels obligated to go on talking about Autumn Rain, because that, he feels, is the subject. Well, it isn't the subject. You don't know what the subject is, and the moment you run out of things to say about Autumn Rain start talking about something else. In fact, it's a good idea to talk about something else before you run out of things to say about Autumn Rain."
"Make the subject of the next sentence different from the subject of the sentence you just put down. Depend on rhythm, tonality, and the music of language to hold things together. It is impossible to write meaningless sequences. In a sense the next thing always belongs."
"Never worry about the reader, what the reader can understand. When you are writing, glance over your shoulder, and you'll find there is no reader. Just you and the page. Feel lonely? Good. Assuming you can write clear English sentences, give all worry about communication. If you want to communicate, use the telephone."
"To write a poem you must have a streak of arrogance--not in real life I hope. In real life try to be nice. . . . By arrogance I mean that when you are writing you must assume that the next thing you put down belongs not for reasons of logic, but because you put it there. You, the same person who said that, also said this. The adhesive force is your way of writing, not sensible connection."
". . . once language exists only to convey information, it is dying."
Roethke would make lists of random nouns, verbs, and adjectives and ask students to make poems. Maybe use about 5 of the words. Hugo added "The poem must be meaningless."
"Behind several theories of what happens to a poet during the writing of a poem--Eliot's escape from personality, Keats's idea of informing and filling another body, Yeats's notion of the mask, Auden's concept of the poet becoming someone else during the duration of the poem, Valery's idea of a self superior to the self--lies the implied assumption that the self as given is inadequate and will not do."
"How you feel about yourself is probably the most important feeling you have. It colors all other feelings, and if you are a poet, it colors your writing. It may account for your writing."
"T. S. Eliot said 'Bad poets imitate. Good poets steal.'" ...more
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